The Dig Tree

by Sarah Murgatroyd

  There was one important task that had to be completed each day. In order to tame the ‘pathless wilds’, the Exploration Committee had asked Burke to mark his route ‘as permanently as possible, by leaving records, sowing seeds, building cairns at as many points as possible’. The expedition leader was careless about such obligations but, every evening, King took a knife and hacked away the bark of a tree to engrave the letter ‘B’, followed by the camp number. Once the tracks of the horses and camels were washed away, these small engravings became the only evidence of the first European journey across Australia.

  Since 1860, many Burke and Wills enthusiasts have souvenired these carvings or marked trees of their own, leading to confusion about the precise position of authentic expedition camps. There are two ways to spot a ‘fake’ Burke and Wills tree. The explorers never carved ‘BW’ (it was Burke’s expedition and Wills was only recognised later on) and they always inscribed the camp number in roman numerals because straight lines are easier to carve.

  The dynamics of this small group were finely balanced. Each man was dependent on the skills of the others, so personal quirks and weaknesses stood out. In practical terms, Wills was a more capable leader than Burke, but the Irishman possessed a combination of dash and charisma that either infuriated or inspired. The two men were complete opposites in most respects, yet they developed a relationship of ‘affectionate intimacy’, with Burke habitually referring to his deputy as ‘My dear boy’. As the days passed, the four men seemed to settle down well and the journey north was free of the hostility that had torn the expedition apart on the way to Menindee. In particular, twenty-two-year-old John King was distinguishing himself as a versatile and capable member of the party. Small, quiet and shy, he was an unlikely explorer.

  John King grew up during the years of the Great Famine in a thatched whitewashed cottage in the village of Moy, County Tyrone. To ensure he escaped a life of poverty his father (himself a soldier) enrolled him at the Royal Hibernian School, a military college in Dublin. At the age of fourteen King found himself a member of the British army. In his neat handwriting he wrote down his particulars in his regimental account book:

  Height: 5 feet 1 inches

  Hair: Brown

  Complexion: Fresh

  Eyes: Hazel

  Next of kin: William and Samuel King (brothers, 70th regiment)

  Date of birth: December 15th 1838

  A year later King was posted to India, where he joined the military band and then took a posting as a teacher, attached to the 70th infantry regiment. In 1857, he was stationed in Peshawar at the height of the Indian Mutiny. A fellow soldier described one example of the brutality that occurred when groups of rebels were brought into the barracks:

  The forty men condemned to death were brought out in batches of ten and were placed with their backs against the muzzles of field guns. No word of command was given by the officer of the artillery detachment, but the gunners knew that when he raised his sword arm they were to fire. This was done to save the men who were to be shot from hearing the word of command. I think this form of death was much more merciful than the alternative of either hanging or shooting, the charge of the blank powder in the gun instantaneously breaking the body into some four pieces. This process was repeated until the whole of the number had been executed.

  King was among the lines of soldiers watching this grisly punishment and shuddered with revulsion each time the blast of the cannons shattered another body in front of him. Soon afterwards he went on leave for sixteen months after contracting ‘fever of a bad type’, a complaint that was probably exacerbated by the initial stages of consumption. King was convalescing in Karachi in 1859 when he met George Landells. The camel trader was impressed with the young man’s ability to speak the various languages of the sepoy camel handlers, and it wasn’t long before he suggested that King sign up for a grand expedition across Australia. It was the perfect excuse to leave the army. King purchased his discharge and joined Landells on the trek through India to take the camels back to Australia. By the time they reached Melbourne, Landells was more convinced than ever of King’s worth and persuaded Burke to hire him at a salary of £120 per year.

  During the power struggle that erupted on the way to Menindee, King might have been expected to sympathise with Landells, but there was never any hint of him taking sides or incurring Burke’s wrath. Always calm and reserved, with a strong sense of duty, King melted into the background and got on with his job. His reward was a place in the forward party.

  With King in charge of the camels, the rest of the camp work fell to ex-sailor Charley Gray. A tall bear-like man in his forties, his employer Thomas Dick described him as a ‘stout and hearty’ worker, who got drunk just once a month when he received his wages. With his cheerful grin and easy-going personality, Gray was a favourite at the pub in Swan Hill, where he worked as an ostler, and he seemed to get on well with everyone on the expedition. Now, with his sinewy arms covered in tattoos of mermaids and anchors, Gray was about to embark on the first overland crossing of Australia.

  In the first week the expedition averaged around twenty-five kilometres a day. Wills was pleased to report on 23 December that so far, the journey had been relatively painless:

  We found the ground not nearly so bad for travelling on as that between Bulloo and Cooper’s Creek; in fact, I do not know whether it arose from our exaggerated anticipation of horrors or not, but we thought it far from bad travelling ground and as to pasture, it is only the actually stony ground that is bare, and many a sheep run is in fact, worse grazing than that.

  Charley Gray was well-liked and had proven bush skills. The controversy that later surrounded him led to intense scrutiny of Burke’s behaviour.

  Burke and his men were doing well. As the terrain grew harsher, they displayed an uncanny ability to discover the most fertile strips of land, in areas where just a kilometre either way might make the difference between finding water or dying of thirst. Their first stroke of good fortune was to traverse an area 100 kilometres above the Cooper, known as Coongie Lakes.

  These magical lagoons lie nestled amongst brick-red sand dunes. Nourished by an almost permanent supply of milky orange water, the lakes form one of the richest ecological sites in Australia, providing sanctuary to people, animals and plants. They are important to many Aboriginal groups but principally to the Yawarrawarrka people, who know the area as Kayityirru. When Burke and Wills stumbled across Coongie, it was in pristine condition—before the influx of rabbits and cattle ravaged the soil and dislocated the trees. They saw it before the wide dirt roads of the oil and gas prospectors crept ever closer and the thump of the seismic equipment echoed through the soil. Even now, with pipelines and mines sneaking through the dunes, Coongie retains its tranquillity and magnificence. It is a remote area, often cut off for months by floodwaters, but anyone persistent enough to come here is rewarded with the sense of entering into an enchanted kingdom, insulated from the rest of the world by a sea of rippling sand. Wills was delighted to find such fertile country:

  At two miles further we came in sight of a large lagoon bearing N by W, and at three miles more we camped on what would seem the same creek as last night, near where it enters the lagoon. The latter is of great extent, and contains a large quantity of water, which swarms with wildfowl of every description. It is shallow, but is surrounded by the most pleasing woodland scenery, and everything in the vicinity looks fresh and green. The creek near its junction with the lagoon containing some good water-holes some five to six foot deep.

  Coongie’s Aboriginal inhabitants were astounded by the strangers who set up camp at their waterholes, but they expressed neither fear nor hostility. Wills found the local people to be remarkably welcoming:

  There was a large camp of not less than forty of fifty blacks near where we stopped. They brought us presents of fish, for which we gave them some beads and matches. These fish we found to be a most valuable addition to our rations. They were the same kind as
we had found elsewhere, but finer, being nine to ten inches long, and two or three inches deep, and in such good condition that they might have been fried in their own fat.

  Later, both Burke and Wills mention that the local tribesmen offered them women, according to their custom. These invitations were rejected in disgust.

  So far Wills had proved to be somewhat condescending towards Aboriginal behaviour and traditions. Burke’s attitude ranged from indifference to hostility. Now the journey was under way, he wanted to travel across the continent with as little interference as possible. Most of the time he did just that. Wills was often surprised that they didn’t see more Aborigines, unaware that the party was being constantly monitored by a network of well-camouflaged messengers. The camels and Billy meant the expedition was never molested. Speed also helped. Since the party never lingered for more than a night at each campsite, it was not seen as a threat. Indeed, the local people often overcame their shyness to point out the best creeks and waterholes to the men as they passed through.

  On several occasions Burke and Wills tried to persuade Aboriginal men to guide them, although they did not resort to the brutal tactics of later explorers such as David Carnegie. He would often hunt and capture Aboriginal people, then tie them to a tree until thirst forced them to point the way to the nearest billabong. Wills offered beads and mirrors as enticements but there was no time to win anyone’s trust and his attempts failed.

  On Christmas Eve, nearly 200 kilometres from the Cooper, they reached a campsite Wills described as their most beautiful so far:

  We took a day of rest on Gray’s Creek, to celebrate Christmas. This was doubly pleasant, as we had never in our most sanguine moments anticipated finding such a beautiful oasis in the desert. Our camp was really an agreeable place for we had all the advantages of food and water attending a position on a large creek or river, and were at the same time free of the annoyances of the numberless ants, flies and mosquitoes that are invariably met with amongst timber or heavy scrub.

  The men rested by the creek and indulged in extra rations. Burke planned to catch up on his diary but perhaps his Christmas feast got the better of him. He managed just forty-two words: ‘We started from Cooper’s Creek, Camp 66, with the intention of going through to Eyre’s Creek without water. Loaded with 800 pints of water, four riding camels 130 pints each, horse 150, two pack camels 50 each, and five pints each man.’ One can easily imagine Burke asleep under a gum tree, his cabbage-tree hat over his face to keep out the flies and his notebook lying in the dirt beside him.

  The party left Gray’s Creek at 4 a.m. on Christmas Day, but lethargy soon overtook them. Burke recorded: ‘At two pm, Golah Singh [a camel] gave some very decided hints about stopping and lying down under the trees. Splendid prospect.’ Every hour of rest was a luxury. The party was still travelling too slowly and using up too much food. The journey was degenerating into a test of endurance—as much a race against dwindling rations as against McDouall Stuart. Burke’s diary declined further into a series of dates and times:

  December 30th—Started at seven o’clock; travelled 11 hours.

  31st—Started 2.20; 16½ hours on the road. Travelled 13½ hours.

  1st January 1861.—Water.

  2nd January.—From Kings Creek; 11 hours on the road. Started at seven; travelled nine and a half hours. Desert.

  3rd January.—Five started. Travelled 12 hours. No minutes.

  4th.—Twelve hours on the road.

  The terrain was unpredictable. There were stretches of easy walking across drying claypans and lightly timbered plains, but there were also large tracts of boggy ground and kilometres of monotonous red dunes. Even so, the horrors of Sturt’s Stony Desert were never fully realised. The simmering rubble appeared only in patches, leaving Wills sceptical of their fearsome reputation: ‘We camped at the foot of a sand-ridge jutting out on to the stony desert. I was disappointed although not altogether surprised that the latter was nothing more than the stony rises we had met with before, only on a larger scale and not quite as undulating.’ The camels coped better on the rugged sections than expected. They possessed a surprising ability to pick their way through the stones, while the men were limited to stumbling along, never quite hitting their stride on the rock-strewn plains.

  Twelve hours’ march through the desert soon becomes a tiring and tedious experience. In the desiccated atmosphere, hair becomes brittle, skin burns and flakes, nails crack between scaly cuticles, hands and feet split open and cuts fester into ulcers that never heal. Streams of sweat mix with the sand and dust to produce a gritty paste that chafes like sandpaper in the elbows and groin. Constant wind and intense light leave eyes sore and throats scratchy, reducing voices to a whisper. Sleep is often interrupted by a raspy cough. Flies swarm around the face, provoking a constant swishing motion with the arms and an occasional outburst of total frustration.

  The sun heats up the environment until the air, the sand and the rock radiate heat, putting the explorers under enormous physical strain. As their work rate increased, their core body temperatures rose from 37°C to around 39°C. They sweated profusely and their skins flushed as their blood vessels dilated and carried the heat to the surface. At the start of the journey, before they were acclimatised, the men would have been susceptible to salt depletion and cramps. If they worked too hard their heads began to pound and they felt dizzy. Disturbed vision and stomach cramps followed. The only solution to this was to slow down.

  Sweating requires energy and large amounts of liquid. Dehydration was a constant danger, especially as it was easy to ignore. The body does not always send the right signals to the brain and many people do not feel thirsty even when they are seriously dehydrated. In severe conditions, when a person sweats up to two litres per hour, it becomes almost impossible for the gut to absorb enough water to keep up. The explorers compounded the problem by marching for many hours without drinking, then guzzling large amounts of liquid in one go once they had stopped. This was the worst way to rehydrate. Since their blood had been diverted away from the gut, their digestive systems couldn’t cope and they felt bloated and sick.

  Burke and his men carried about three and a half litres with them per day, yet they would have needed at least fifteen litres just to replenish the liquid they were sweating away. Although they always had sufficient water each evening, they must have been dangerously thirsty throughout most of the day’s march. Dehydration also has a devastating effect on the body’s physical performance. A 2 per cent deficiency in body liquid results in a 10 per cent reduction in endurance capacity. Many of the body’s most important functions including the efficient digestion of food depend on a plentiful supply of water. In their dehydrated state, Burke, Wills, Gray and King were not even getting the full benefit of their limited diet. The explorers were pushing their bodies to the limit day after day. It was an extraordinary demonstration of stamina and determination but the cumulative effects were inescapable.

  Mentally, such journeys are just as testing. When trekking hour after hour, it is the small things that irritate. Seeds from tangles of spinifex grass work their way inside socks and boots, irritating the skin until there is no alternative but to spend every rest-stop picking out the burrs and scratching the itchy red sores. Sweat stings, flies buzz, belts pinch, boots rub and water bottles jangle. Just the sound of someone humming a tune over and over or swishing a stick in the sand can be the final straw. Keeping a sense of perspective while marching becomes a conjuring trick of the mind and people have to find their own way of coping.

  Burke and Wills were stoic about their physical circumstances. By now they were sometimes achieving sixty kilometres in a single march. If anything, the relative ease with which they coped during the early stages of the journey belied the magnitude of the task ahead. For now, luck was running in Burke’s favour. It was Christmas, and the explorers were about to receive a geographical gift that would take them all the way to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

  Thirteen

>   Never More Severely Taxed

  ‘A live donkey is better than a dead lion isn’t it?’

  Ernest Shackleton to his wife, after turning back ninety-seven miles from the South Pole in 1909.

  The revelation occurred as Burke’s party toiled through the sandhills. In the open sun, the men clawed their way up the ramparts as the grit slithered away beneath them. ‘Each day,’ John King scribbled wearily towards the end of December, ‘we had to face the Desert again.’ Even Wills was exhausted:

  We found the ground much worse to travel over than any we have yet met with. As the ridges were exceedingly abrupt and steep on their eastern side, and although sloping gradually towards the west, were so honeycombed in some places by the burrows of rats, that the camels were continually in danger of falling.

  They tried to keep to the meshes of vegetation that anchored the sand—but marching through the clumps of spinifex was like striding through a forest of razor blades and their trousers hung in rags around their bloody ankles. Every dune was the same and every summit revealed another confusing mass of orange laid out like a giant rumpled tablecloth. Marching parallel to the hills, down in the claypans, was easier. Sometimes it was possible to follow the shelter of a valley for hours, unaware of anything but the strip of greenery stretched out ahead. The danger was that by sticking to the low-lying ground, the explorers might miss creeks or lagoons just one sandhill to the left or right. It would be easy to die just a few hundred feet from a water source hidden by a wall of sand.

  This area of western Queensland is now known as the channel country. Flying is the best way to appreciate the arid landscape and the fragility of the river system that feeds it. Watching the carpet of ochre pass beneath, hour after hour, imagining what it would be like to cross it on foot, is an awe-inspiring experience. Only a few tiny capillaries of green, spread out like a network of blood vessels, give any clue that life is being pumped through isolated corridors of land. In a fertile year, latching on to one of these creeks is like connecting with the slenderest branches of a tree. Following it will lead to larger and larger branches until the trunk is reached and, with any luck, it will be rooted to the coastline.